While we wouldn't complain if you blew your entire art budget at our Beasts! print show, here are some other worthy things to spend your money on:

• If you would like to buy some original pages from House, or perhaps some X-rated ABBA fan art, or commission a portrait of your kittycat, Josh Simmons has your hookup (hat tip: Spurge)

• Maybe you'd like to buy a limited-edition print based on Jaime Hernandez's cover art for the Criterion DVD of Divorce Italian Style? (Detail above -- via Spurge again)

• Lots of good stuff at the WFMU Benefit Art Show

The 2008 Best-Of lists are rolling in fast and furious:

• Bookmunch goes Fanta-crazy this week with reviews of Bottomless Belly Button by Dash Shaw ("graphic novel of the year"), Funeral of the Heart by Leah Hayes ("dazzling") and Abandoned Cars by Tim Lane ("spirited")

• The Independent counts the Love and Rockets reprints Perla La Loca, Beyond Palomar and Amor Y Cohetes among the best comics of the year

• Critic and commentator Alan David Doane names The Education of Hopey Glass by Jaime Hernandez his Graphic Novel of the Year; Abandoned Cars by Tim Lane is his Debut of the Year; Ghost World: Special Edition by Daniel Clowes is his Reissue of the Year; Strange and Stranger: The World of Steve Ditko by Blake Bell is tied for Comic Art Book of the Year; and 4 more of our titles are Other 2008 Titles of Note

• New York Magazine names Bottomless Belly Button the #2 Graphic Novel of 2008, saying "Shaw's dysfunctional-family epic is so funny and engrossing we'd expect Oprah to pick it, but for all the graphic frog sex"

• The Globe and Mail recommends Strange and Stranger: The World of Steve Ditko for holiday gift-giving

• From Steven Stwalley, here's photos of the "Hot Ink: Comic Art" show at the Minnesota Museum of American Art (mmaa.org) that includes Zak Sally and Tom Kaczynski among others

• In this video from Comicology.tv, Mort Walker talks about the history of the International Museum of Cartoon Art (look for our collection of Walker's Sam's Strip early next year)

• Publishers Weekly talks to Lilli Carré about The Lagoon

• PW also presents a 10-page excerpt from Anders Nilsen's soon-to-arrive Monologues for Calculating the Density of Black Holes

• Wall Street Journal book critic and Laura Warholic novelist Alexander Theroux weighs in on The Paris Review Interviews, Vol. III

• The Beat goes digging through back issues of The Comics Journal, finds gold

• The Daily Vanguard gives Ganges #2 by Kevin Huizenga the #1 spot on its Top 10 Graphic Novels and Comics of 2008, a list which also includes Mome Vol. 12, The Education of Hopey Glass by Jaime Hernandez, and Bottomless Belly Button by Dash Shaw

• The Daily Cross Hatch calls Beasts! Book 2 "downright stunning"

• Ward Six looks at The Portable Frank by Jim Woodring

• USA TODAY Pop Candy is excited about the Brian K. Vaughn interview in The Comics Journal #295

• There's a great illustration by Max in this New York Times article about the future of the publishing industry that we're all reading with great interest

• New Robert Crumb comics (via everywhere)

• Here's photos of Dame Darcy's post-APE appearance at Isotope Comics...

• ...and a photo from J.R. Williams of himself with Jim Blanchard and Daniel Clowes at APE

• Nuvole Parlanti discusses (in Italian) the Ghost World graphic novel and film

• The Chicago Reader has the first review of Lilli Carré's The Lagoon

• Newsarama looks at The Education of Hopey Glass by Jaime Hernandez

• Sometime Comics Journal contributor Noah Berlatsky discusses his favorite parts of the latest issue (#293)

Peter Bagge, Jaime Hernandez and others sound off on the election results to MTV.

Congratulations are also in order to Dash Shaw and Jaime Hernandez for their books, The Bottomless Belly Button and The Education of Hopey Glass(respectively), being named to Publishers Weekly's Best Graphic Novels of the Year list. 

Mike Baehr, Janice Headley and I are headed down Friday for this weekend's Alternative Press Expo in San Francisco, and we will be bringing along about 150 comics and books for you to browse and get signed all weekend long by our amazing line-up of attending authors:

Saturday:

11AM Johnny Ryan
12PM Kevin Huizenga & Bob Levin
1PM John Pham & Johnny Ryan
2PM Daniel Clowes & Ted Stearn
3PM Jaime Hernandez & Megan Kelso
4PM Jaime Hernandez & Dame Darcy
5PM From MOME: Jonathan Bennett & Tim Hensley

Sunday: 

11AM Megan Kelso & Kevin Huizenga
12PM Jaime Hernandez & John Pham
1PM Daniel Clowes & Ted Stearn
2PM Dame Darcy
3PM Dame Darcy
4PM Jaime Hernandez & Johnny Ryan

Meanwhile, Jordan Crane, Esther Pearl Watson, Chris Ware (yes, Chris Ware!), and others will also be appearing at the show. How can you miss it? It runs 11 to 7 Saturday and 11 to 6 Sunday. 

As an experiment, I'm switching to a daily link post instead of the weekly "blogosphere roundup" -- hopefully smaller chunks will be easier to digest, not to mention more timely. And here we go:

• Derik Badman cites a Jaime Hernandez story in an article about the use of the first-person point of view in comics

• Look at some incredible sketchbook pages by Matthias Lehmann

• The Onion A.V. Club's "Comics Panel" gives high grades to Tales Designed to Thrizzle #4 by Michael Kupperman and Love and Rockets: New Stories #1 by the Hernandez Brothers

• Steve Brodner hits it out of the park

Zak Sally and Jaime Hernandez at the Rain Taxi Literary Festival a couple weekends ago. 

Bid on this killer piece and more HERE.